Unity in Diversity

Many scholars are happy to see that traditional Rukai tribal hunting is being allowed under resource-management controls in order to achieve sustainable economic use of natural resources. "Only when tribal people are economically independent can they rediscover their cultural identity," they argue. "It's a good way for them to regain their self-respect."

It's just that there are more and more problems associated with modern commercial activities. If hunting by indigenous people loses its roots and takes on a commercial orientation with tribesmen working as guides, will that mean that killing is being done just the fun of it? Will this be out of tune with the solemn attitudes that Taiwan's indigenous peoples traditionally held about hunting.

While there are many ways of looking at this issue, Sun Ta-chuan, vice chairman of the Council of Aboriginal Affairs, and Ming Li-kuo, who researches aboriginal music, approach it from a cultural angle.

Sun Ta-chuan:

One way to go is to have hunting culture adopt modern management methods. It is hard to predict what the results will be, but as tribal resources are being transformed by taking on an economic character, they will require new models to exist in modern society. This is the new direction of things. While we try in Taiwan to find our own special character, our "native soil," the culture of the indigenous peoples will be an important resource.

When cultural activities are given an economic aspect, they become double-edged swords and may damage original values, but perhaps we can also create new values, creating new rules and new splendor. It's worth trying. No possibility should be excluded.

It's our duty to protect tradition, but it can't be denied that young people are combining tradition and new culture to create something else. Let's hope what they make is elevated and reduces exploitation. But if there's no way to hold onto something, just let it go and face the fact that it has died. Still, if in this age majority groups are, by imposing their systems and laws, accelerating the disappearance of other cultures, we must also work hard at eliminating those parts of the system that speed the death of these cultures and peoples.

While loosening the laws governing aboriginal hunting and opening some doors that will make life easier for indigenous peoples, tribal youth should be treated the same way Han Chinese youngsters are. Of course, in addition to modern models, we should also have ways of letting them relearn their traditions. Apart from transmitting the hunting values and techniques of hunters, we have to provide rules so that tribal peoples do not violate the logic of their own cultural systems. Internally, there has to be self-regulation and restrictions on production.

So that future Taiwan culture has the imprint of Taiwan's native peoples on it, tribes ought to open themselves and enter the outside world to find other methods of existence. History is open; if you want to abandon it, then you will lose many possibilities. All life choices are challenges and rife with danger. They shouldn't make us stagnate. At any stage of life, you should always respond to your era and environment. At each stage one should seek to correct and reexamine oneself, but this doesn't mean that you should abandon your own cultural systems.

Ming Li-kuo

When hunting culture enters the modern marketplace and becomes an economic activity, this harms the ethics of hunting culture.

Industrial-commercial culture and hunting culture are incompatible. Industrial-commercial civilization has an operational logic that promotes hoarding. Hunting, on the other hand, works by tribal consensus; it's sharing. Its power has no way of damaging nature, because it is symbiotic in character. The so-called "wilderness" of industrial civilization is an abundant source of food in hunting societies.

Today industrial and commercial society controls resources the same way it treats people and land, and to think that it will solve the problems of the indigenous peoples is not being respectful of their culture. In dealing with living beings in the world of nature, production and supply and demand are hard to control; throwing economics into the mix won't make these any easier to calculate. I know many tribal elders who object to the way young tribesmen these days sell their catches to lowlanders.

Civilization can not be operated like a machine. Cultural diversity is the only way for humanity to raise its chances for survival. Hence for different civilizations to exist in the same time and place, there has to be an acceptance of different cultural systems. People ought to adjust their own cultural vision, and find harmony in differences.

Today, if we lack basic respect for cultural diversity, then there will be no way to really bring it about. Laws, concepts and ways of thinking should all take into account the needs and existence of different kinds of people and should be more flexible. It's just unfortunate that now people don't even understand hunting culture. Today, culture shouldn't be operated by people with one-directional thinking. The people who implement policy in government agencies should also have a holistic view of things.

The cultures of Taiwan's indigenous peoples have existed for hundreds and thousands of years, and they have their own laws. If the tribal peoples believe that traditions ought to be respected, then where punishment is required, punish. Of course, many standards of the past can be applied again.

Hunting culture helps us think about the limitations of industrial civilization. Industrial civilization makes the whole world march to the same beat. And I don't think that is the way the world should be; it's a no-win situation, just like river water going through the process of eutrification. When industrial-commercial civilization sets the rules of the game for everyone, then everyone will start having problems.

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Ming Li-kuo says that in a commercial-industrial era, there still is-and should be-room for mountain culture to survive. (photo by Diago Chiu)

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Sun Ta-chuan hopes that as indigenous people turn their cultural assets to economic advantage, they not forget how mountain culture traditions call for restraint in hunting and sharing of resources. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kang)